Unsure how to integrate a more inclusive approach to design within your company? Below you will find some general hints and tips followed by more specific suggestions for senior management, for design and innovation managers and for those involved in design research and education
- Take a hard look at your consumer offers and seek appropriate professional help. Are you offers age- and ability-friendly? If not, where do they fall short? Be self-critical and persist until you answer all challenging questions that arise.
- Find out if your business complies with anti-discrimination legislation. Contact the Employers' Forum for Disability which publishes guidance on the relevant legislation.
- Develop a strategy for responding to the 'age shift' highlighted by the DTI Foresight report. Familiarise yourself with the strategic potential of inclusive design when focused on business objectives as set out in the Design Council policy paper on ageing populations, Living Longer: the new context for design, 2001.
- Embrace the need for cultural change within your company. Set up an internal change team to audit your company's current offerings and practices. Brief the team to generate opportunities to enhance performance and introduce an effective transformation in attitudes. It should also identify examples of best practice within your organisation and elsewhere, then report back on how competitors are performing. Ensure that the change team reports directly to the board.
- Try to get a better understanding of the range of people who will use the product or service you are working on. Don't rely on assumptions: check the demographics, especially at overlaps between different age groups, to identify market opportunities and the potential to create competitive advantage. For example, there is a considerable growth in single-person and two-person households - predominantly among young and older people, and increasingly disabled people.
- Establish a group of demanding (perhaps 'extreme') users. It need not be large, but should include people who can test your products and services, and challenge the perceptions of your designers and the assumptions that underlie their work. Work closely together, by staging focus groups and 'walk-throughs' to test products and environments.
- Create a small team of consumer champions drawn from different sections and levels of the company who report to you. Encourage them to take a proactive role in gathering information, making contacts, identifying problems and proposing solutions. Give them a specific amount of time each week for this activity and ensure that their input is valued by the company and acted on.
In more depthVisit the
Design Methods section of this site for ideas and methods that will help you better understand what your users want and need